Sound Advice

Good God! Quiet Riot are coming to the Grail on Friday! And it's a benefit for Rock for Tots! Though they're generally overlooked amid the '80s proliferation of various strains of metal (specifically "hair"), the Riot were the band that made American metal OK. Their 1983 debut in the States (two previous albums had been released only in Japan), Metal Health, was the first album by an American metal band to reach No. 1 here. That's confusing, we know, but making America safe for American metal was a huge feat at a time when most popular metal bands were English. A personal note: To this day, because of the cover of Metal Health, just thinking about a straightjacket makes us piddle.

Cancelled

Last week, we said that Spokane's year in hip-hop concerts would be defined by the way it ended, with the Public Enemy show this Monday and the Rock the Bells tour last week. We were right, turns out, but not in the way we expected.

Late Monday morning, we got a press release saying that RtB, which was to feature Redman and Raekwon among others, had been cancelled. No reason could be gleaned and phone calls weren't returned, but there was a note about the tickets people had bought. They could be used to get into the Public Enemy show, which hasn't been cancelled yet. So if you've got an RtB ticket burning a hole in your pocket, use it to hit up Public Enemy.

Fans of Redman and Wu-Tang, though, don't tend to be huge Public Enemy fans (being a whole generation removed), and the whole thing has us wondering if the reason hip-hop shows get cancelled in this town has to do with marketers not understanding the nuances that exist in rap circles. n

Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. and Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Continues through June 11

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